


Fog

by orphan_account



Category: Final Fantasy VII
Genre: Alternate Universe, Disturbing Themes, Gen, Human Experimentation, Insanity, Rape/Non-con References
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-10-12
Updated: 2011-10-12
Packaged: 2017-10-24 13:32:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,094
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/264015
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mostly, Aeris just wishes Tseng would stop pretending he's sorry.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fog

**Author's Note:**

> This work contains references to off-screen rape and off-screen character death.

He watches her through the glass; her breath fogs it. Still, his expression is blank, as it is whenever he works.

Smiling is easy - it cuts him like glass shards biting deep into his still beating heart. She has no doubt it is her smile that causes him to leave ( _flee flee flee_ ).

* * *

When her eyes snap open, he is there, crouching beside her. “Can you stand?” he asks, almost a tremor in his voice, and she want to laugh with it.

Fire burns through her veins, pain and heat intensifying with each bird-flutter beat of her heart. Mostly, though, her arm hurts, puffy from needle-pricks. “Tseng?” she asks, tries to focus on the neat contours on his mouth, “Did you get a bonus for bringing me in?”

He does not deign to answer her - she is a thing now, upgraded from slum-rat - and he instead lifts her limp body into his arms, holds her against his chest, and takes her back to her tube-home.

* * *

There are footsteps, ringing through her skull - she can feel the leather hard and smooth on her face (but her nose’s not cracking). “Tseng?” she recognizes his smell - mint tea and leather, sometimes blood - “Please,” feels her words break, shatter into pieces across her fingertips.

She can feel him clench his fists, they tug at her hair, and she can see grass from his childhood clinging to the suit made from plants that call for the plains outside a place called _Gongonga_. “Aeris,” his voice is soft, tickles her toes.

“Will you - talk, just talk - to me? Please - I - I miss -” freedom tastes like sunlight and lavender in her throat, but he’ll do, because he was the one who took her freedom into his gloved hands.

His gloves were once a beast in Wutai; fitting, because he was once the same, she can feel the dirt of his homeland baked into his skin, like crusted desert salt in lands that don’t exist anymore, but did, a long time ago, and her heart beats with the loss of it.

Tseng pauses, his eyelashes tickle her thighs with each blink, and it confuses her. (He’s on the other side of the glass, how is he touching her?) But she can feel his breath ghosting her wrists, even as she watches it fog the glass.

“Aeris...” he stops, bows his head, his hair tastes like Midgar smog and Rufus’s cologne. “I’m sorry.”

* * *

She spends three days sobbing - or that’s what they say, anyway, with words that taste like ice, which soothes the thrum of fire in her veins. They can’t stop her.

It’s kind of funny, but she cries not laughs.

* * *

Tseng finds her after the soldiers are finished. The fire-pain has receded enough from her that she can recognize that tomorrow will be an injection day (and those are the worst, worst, worst, except for those are the days Tseng will touch her, really touch her, and she can press her ear to his chest, and feel his heartbeat in her ribcage) but she can also recognize what just happened.

What really scares her is that this might be a daily occurrence and she wouldn’t even know.

Except for the fact that his face is twisted with some sort of anger instead of blankness, she guesses if it is an everyday occurrence, they had until now managed to hide if from Tseng. Aeris sits up and casts about for her clothes - or had those been stripped from her a long time ago? - and Tseng hands her the pink, familiar cloth that’s a little dirty but still whole, and she tries for a smile or something, but she just takes it and stares at it.

“Aeris,” he says, reaches out to her, and she lets him touch her face, because she feels sticky and gross and all of these things, but that doesn’t even come close to how she will feel (or not feel) tomorrow, “I’m sorry,” he says, again, like he means it.

“No. Don’t - don’t play this game, Tseng. If you had really - ever - cared you wouldn’t have -” and she stops, her voice trembles, and she presses her face into her dress and cries.

His hands run through her hair.

They’re shaking.

* * *

“Tell me what the Planet says,” the man says, but the glare off his glasses reflects, burns the skin beneath her fingernails.

Aeris hisses, tries to skitter back, but hits the glass of her home, and the glass was once part of that desert that doesn’t exist anymore, and she tilts her head back, enjoys the heat of the sun, and winces as she feels it start to burn her skin red. _Cloud? No, clouds. Clouds like pale skin, that’s why they block out sunlight._ “Tell me what the Planet says,” the man demands, harsher, voice a whip crack across her back.

She bleeds with it, reaches to feel the lacerations, but finds smooth skin not even burned raw by the sun.

It’s then she looks up and sees the fluorescent lights. “The Planet says...” she looks at the man again, sits down and wraps her arms around her knees, “The Planet says I’m somewhere else. Clouds protect the skin,” and she can’t stop the tears, but she can’t understand why she’s crying, so she cries harder.

The man makes a disgusted noise and leaves.

* * *

She hears the man with glasses talking one day. “The Ancient reacts intriguingly to Mako Injections. It seems that while it has the negative effect of sapping away independent thought, it does strengthen its connection to the Planet.”

There are more voices.

“Yes, yes,” he says, “We’ll have to experiment more in order to decide which dosage of Mako to give it.”

And a needle stabs into her arm, floods her with liquid fire, and then she brushes fingers over the wood grain of her chair, and wonders why it left Nibelheim.

* * *

It’s the day before injection day, and she watches while Tseng approaches her tube. He just looks at her, not close enough for his breath to fog the glass; she can’t help the question that springs from her mouth:

“Are they still alive?”

And she can only vaguely push past the fire-in-her-veins to remember who ‘they’ refers to: blonde hair, fighter gloves, gun-arm, XIII, yellow-shoes, cigarette, red-cape, and dancing cat, but she does know they’re important, does know to wonder why they haven’t found her yet.

Tseng takes a breath, shuts his eyes. “No. I’m sorry. No.”

She can’t hold the tears in; Tseng bows his head, and then walks out.


End file.
